Barlow: Good reasons for celebration

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, July 5, 2001

This column is for all the workers -- like me -- not smart enough to convince the boss you needed today and Friday off for a long, get-out-of-town Fourth of July weekend.

Rather than celebrate the Fourth with a fifth, I counted my blessings. The chief of which is freedom. We are blessed with a political system that allows us to do what we want, unless specifically prohibited by the government. That attitude is slowly spreading through a world where the norm has always been that you could do nothing unless the government gave you specific permission to act.

· Since Thomas Malthus' "Essay on the Principles of Population" 200 years ago, we've been regularly warned we're all about to starve to death with population outstripping food supply.

Well, since 1950 the global population has increased 90 percent. If food was indeed becoming scarce, prices would soar. Instead, in the same period the real price of food -- after subtracting inflation -- has fallen 75 percent.

That's true not just in the developed world. China's food supply grew 82 percent; India's 51 percent. The percentage of chronically undernourished in the world's population fell from 35 percent to 19 percent.

More people living longer

· Life expectancy soared. Staying alive is the single most important human right I can think of. For much of man's history, we died by age 30. By 1998 longevity increased to 66.9 years worldwide. In developed countries, a baby born in 1998 could expect to live to 76.4 years.

What happened? Simple. Better food, advances in public health like treating the water supply and medical progress. There's a direct correlation between wealth and longevity. And it doesn't take much money to make big advances. A country with a gross domestic product of just $300 per year per person would have increased citizens' average life expectancy from 44.7 years in 1962 to 55 in 1997.

· Infant mortality has plummeted. Before industrialization, which brought all those things deplored -- cities, crowding, pollution and the workers of the world chained to their machines by soul-less business -- one out of every five children died before reaching a first birthday.

In 1995, worldwide infant mortality dropped to 58 per 1,000 births worldwide. In the United States, it's seven deaths per 1,000 births.

Work hours down; wages up

· Economic development has revolutionized our lives. Between 1870 and 1992, average hours worked per person employed declined 48 percent in the United States. Real wages in the United States, with inflation factored out, zoomed from $10,645 per person in 1952 to $23,377 in 1995.

Those numbers really understate how technology has expanded our horizons. For example, today with a computer you can access the Library of Congress' electronic catalog from your home. In 1952 you had to travel to Washington.

· Global illiteracy rates dropped from 45.8 percent in 1970 to 25.6 percent in 1997. The percentage of children ages 10 to 14 who are working declined from 24 percent in 1960 to 12.6 percent in 1997.

Progress wasn't universal. Two areas haven't shared in it. Sub-Sahara Africa is getting worse. The AIDS virus is devastating that area of the world, with infection rates in some countries hitting 40 percent of people between 18 and 45. That portion of Africa has also been plagued with conflict.

Russia, and to a lesser extent its former Eastern European satellites, has been hit hard by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its inability to establish a rule of law. Between 1989 and 1997, gross domestic product in real dollars in Russia declined 41 percent. Life expectancy has been declining since 1980. Alcoholism increased, as did accidental deaths, homicides, hypertension and suicides.

Yes, progress is far from universal. But let us not despair.

The most hopeful sign is an index of economic freedom that found it increased in the 1990s in 98 of the 116 countries studied. More economic freedom means higher economic growth and a better, longer life for everyone.